Fred Schmalz : part five

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?

Some books are definitely touchstones for me. I return to Oppen’s daybooks and papers to remind myself that things don’t need to resolve. I return to the copy of Langston Hughes’ later long poem “Ask Your Mama” that my friend Kathy gave me ages ago, to remind myself that poetry is a gift and that it is music. I find Inger Christensen and Etel Adnan and W.S. Merwin and Nicanor Parra and Harryette Mullen incredibly inspiring, even if my writing is not much like theirs. I also seek renewal from my friends who are poets, by their writing and their spirits.

Fred Schmalz : part four

How do you know when a poem is finished?

Language continues, so I’m not sure if there’s a “finished” state, or even if that state is stable. But poetry is patient. For example, a friend just revisited several abandoned “unfinished” poems from twenty years ago, and they realized that with a couple of very minor changes, the pieces were finished… that time and reflection had moved them from abandoned to resolved.

For me the question is: when have I done what I can to be intentional about every aspect of the poem? Which is different from asking whether the poem clicks—some poems get put through their paces and they don’t.

Fred Schmalz : part three

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

The same things that I find rewarding about poetry are what I find most difficult, which are that each poem operates on its own terms, and those terms can’t be defined for any other poem, so you essentially have to carry what you can from the other poems you’ve written and rely on none of it. Starting over each time with no assurance of what will happen is both daunting and compelling.

Fred Schmalz : part two

How important is music to your poetry?

Extremely. Since I was a kid, I have tried to train myself to hear everything around me as music, and to relish it accordingly. This includes the accidents, the interferences, the noise, and the happenstances of sound. The other morning on a run I was repeatedly dive-bombed by an angry crow along a tree-lined street. Though the crow’s aggression freaked me out, the screaming doppler effect as it swooped down was unrepeatable and astonishing. 

Fred Schmalz : part one

Fred Schmalz is the author of Action in the Orchards (Nightboat Books, 2019). He makes art in the collaborative Balas & Wax. His writing has appeared in Oversound, Poetry, A Public Space, Conduit, and elsewhere. He lives in Chicago.

Photo credit: Susy Bielak

How does a poem begin?

For me the poem begins with an encounter and an utterance about that encounter, which may happen at very different times. So, a recognition—here is something that gets to me, that I can’t quite shake, that moves me, that I have forgotten and recalled, or that I have seen and have to address. I rarely sit down to write “about” something—instead I rely on forgetting and the allowance for encounters to resurface while I am writing. I try to allow the imagery to serve as the starting points for poems.